Icarus Instruments' SatTalk

Airborne telephones are nothing new — they've been around for years, mostly in higher-end turbine equipment with the space to mount them and owners willing to pay the bills. And, airliners have been carrying passenger phones for more than a decade. Yet, "affordable" airborne telephone technology has been slow coming to the lighter end of the general aviation fleet. But, with the advent of the Iridium satellite system and the specialized cellular technologies, piston-twin and -single owners can benefit from an airborne telephone also. AVweb's Publisher, Carl Marbach, takes a look at this market as he prepares to install an Iridium-based system in his Aerostar.

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About the Author ...

Carl Marbach is a co-founder
of AVweb and its Publisher. Carl is a 4,000-hour pilot, and commutes between
homes in Boca Raton, Florida, and Aspen, Colorado, in his 1978 Aerostar 601P. Carl
was the founder and CEO of Professional Press which published five computer
magazines including DEC Professional. After Professional Press was acquired by
a venture capital firm, Carl founded Internetwork Publishing Corporation and
now devotes himself to the emerging field of electronic publishing via the
Internet. A lifelong resident of Philadelphia until 1994, Carl and his wife
Helen now live in Boca Raton, Florida.

My
first Aerostar, a 1974 600A, came equipped with a Wulfsberg Flightphone I. This
was a manually-operated early model  "New York operator, this is QM-2602
I'd like to call 215-555-5575 please…"  and was only half-duplex. That
meant only one person could speak at a time; "I'll be home at 6:30 ...
over," I'd say to hear my wife reply, "…ner will be ready." She
could never get the hang of waiting for me to release the transmit button before
speaking.

At the time, I regularly flew from Boston to Philadelphia (where I lived)
after a day's work in Beantown and, when I was over New York, I'd phone home to
give a good estimate of my arrival time. I didn't use the phone very much, but
it was nice to report in at the end of a long day. Every once in a while it was
VERY useful: My wife and I were once delayed by a thunderstorm and we were able
to call and tell the kids that Mom and Dad would be about an hour late. If it
had better coverage and was more user-friendly, I'm sure we would have used it
more.

Today, we don't think much about mobile communications. Nearly everyone seems
to have a cellphone, but once in our airplanes we are out of normal
communications until we land. The promise of better telephone communications in
aircraft came from newer and better Wulfsberg
FlightPhones, some which even had direct-dial capability. It wasn't unusual
to see business or charter aircraft with phones installed. Inmarsat
satellite phones offer better coverage and ease of use, but are very
expensive to own, install and operate. Now, general aviation has some options
that don't require and investment that costs more than many GA airplanes are
worth.

Enter Icarus

Icarus
Instruments, of Takoma Park, Md., has introduced a product that innovatively
connects a standard Kyocera SS-66K Iridium handset satellite phone to an
aircraft's headset. Utilizing the 66 satellites of the Iridium constellation in
low earth orbit, this system offers 24-hour-a-day coverage anywhere in the
world. All it needs is clear view of the sky that can be ensured by the
installation of a Sensor Systems Iridium antenna on top of your airplane. By
utilizing a standard Iridium phone, the system's costs are kept to a record low
$4,995, including the phone, interface and externally mounted TSO'd antenna.
Service plans start at $14.95/month and $2.39/minute for all North American and
Caribbean calls. While the per-minute charge is fairly steep, the cost of
ownership and monthly cost is low enough to be of interest to a lot of GA
airplane owners.

Here's How It Works...

SatTalk
allows you to engage in a satellite telephone call from your cockpit while
seamlessly continuing to communicate with air traffic control. Your existing
aviation headset is used for all telephone communications to ensure readability
and normal ATC communications. Plug your headset and mic jacks into the Icarus
Instrument SatTalk box, the SatTalk into the aircraft's headphone and mike
jacks, and the cable from the SatTalk to the Iridium handset. Initiate a call
using the handset. When the party answers your will hear them in your headset
and may talk to them using the headset's microphone.

After
you have established a satellite telephone connection, ATC may come on the
frequency to talk to you or another pilot. SatTalk detects the incoming ATC
audio and reduces the level of the sat phone audio so you can determine if the
call from ATC is for you. If you then press your push-to-talk switch (PTT) and
respond to the call from ATC, SatTalk sends a short pre-recorded announcement to
the Iridium phone party telling them to "Standby for a moment."
Meanwhile, you continue your ATC communications in private. When you are
finished with ATC, you simply start talking without the PTT pressed and the
Iridium call will continue normally. If the initial incoming ATC transmission is
for another pilot, the Iridium audio level will resume its normal level as soon
as the frequency is clear.

If you arrange with ATC to go off frequency for a while, SatTalk has an
exclusive mode during which incoming ATC audio is ignored. This allows for an
uninterrupted telephone conversation. This mode would also be used if a
passenger were using the Iridium phone.

...Here's What It Is...

SatTalk
includes the Kyocera Iridium satellite telephone and lithium-ion battery,
providing 100 minutes of talk time. Calls can be made from anywhere in the world
at any altitude at any time. The phone can be easily removed for use outside the
aircraft using its built-in antenna and battery.

Iridium is a satellite constellation of 66 low-earth orbit transponders that
provide worldwide telephone coverage via Iridium phones and one of two service
providers. Motorola or Stratos provides service for the Iridium constellation.
Motorola can be reached at 800-232-6274 while you can find Stratos at
888-766-1313. Each Iridium phone comes with a slot for a SIM card. Each
subscriber gets their own SIM card, which contains information about your
service plan and your phone number. More than one person can share (and be
separately billed for) an Iridium phone via separate SIM cards. Iridium got its
name from the fact that the element iridium has 66 electrons circling its
nucleus, the same number of satellites in the Iridium constellation.

...And What It Costs

Both of these service providers have multiple plans. Minimum plans include a
monthly charge of less than $20 and per minute billing of between $2.50/minute
and $3.79/minute depending on where you are and where you are calling. The lower
rate applies to all of North America and the Caribbean. A more moderate plan is
about $35/month with North American calls costing $1.89/minute. While certainly
not as inexpensive as your cellphone, the price is about the same as I used to
pay with the old, limited coverage, half-duplex Wulfsberg. I don't plan on idle
chatter while en route, but having the capability to use the landline system
while in the air should be useful.

Advantages
of the Iridium system include worldwide coverage, transparent handoffs of calls
from one satellite to another and portability  you can take the phone out of
the airplane with you. You can send a text message up to 120 characters long to
the phone via email or the Iridium Web page at no charge. One disadvantage: the
company has not been profitable and filed for Chapter 11 financial restructuring
in 1999. Recently, however, the company has been securing additional financing.
For more information on Iridium, check the
company's web site.

Other Options?

Wulfsberg has gone through a few corporate acquisitions in recent years. In
1997, AlliedSignal sold most of the company to Chelton, but apparently that did
not include its FlightPhone line of business. With the recent acquisition of
AlliedSignal by Honeywell, it's not clear where this product line might go. At
any rate, Honeywell has its own airborne telephone system, the AIRSAT.
Also, there is another provider that has a general aviation product. AirCell
Inc. located in Louisville, Colo., has a unit that uses traditional cellular
technology and agreements with local cellular providers. Aircell has technology
that allows it to use regular cellular frequencies without polluting nearby
cells because the signal is coming from a fast-moving airplane. AirCell
equipment costs and usage are similar to those costs for Iridium. Aircell
coverage is not continuous, even over the United States, and is non-existent
over large bodies of water. The system as currently configured is permanently
installed and not portable. While this reduces the number of wires in the
cockpit, it does reduce the functionality of the system.

Icarus Instruments also makes
other innovative electronics for general aviation. President Steve Silverman is
a real help and a wealth of knowledge on many subjects, the latest of which is
satellite telephonic communications from the cockpit.

AVweb will be installing and flying the SatTalk Iridium system as soon
as we can get the antenna installed on our already-antenna-filled airplane. Look
for more details on using and flying with this system in the near future.

Question of the Week

Picture of the Week

As aviation photos go, this was the best this week but there are some great beauty shots when you click through. In the meantime, congratulations to Daniel Gillette for this very nice photo he calls Sunset Pitch-Out. The photo is copyrighted by Gillette.